Sincerely contrived teen drama finds Vanessa Hudgens in a family way

By Devin D. O’Leary

Pity the poor teenaged Disney star. Sure, they get three or four good years headlining a sitcom on the Disney Channel and a couple of pop hits out of it. But they spend the next 10 years trying desperately to shed their goody two-shoes image.

I climb through narrow sandstone notch canyons and out into a steeply sloping, red-dirt valley that was formed by a peasant revolt ages ago. I help a crazy rag-man to find the terminus for a bundle of blue, cat-5 cables. It turns out to be a cash register operated by John Travolta, who is dressed in wizard garb.

I attend a remedial jobs class that is full of rowdy homeless people. We sit at school desks. The bell rings and a short man with a crew cut gets up and faces the class—he is the professor. He invites us all to come up and get some flyers. I collect one of each, including instructions on how to become a porn star. I return to my seat. A girl dressed in white asks me about my recording contract. I correct her, saying that I did make a record, but did not have a record deal. A guy I know is outside in the snow with his legs across the train tracks, waiting for a train to come. There is already blood in the snow.

Jay McCleskey, top advisor to Gov. Susana Martinez, obtained names and email addresses of non-union public school teachers on behalf of her political action committee. Why McCleskey wanted the list isn't clear. It's against the law for state employees to contribute to the work of PACs.

Joy Junction emergency shelter is set to expand in the midst of what its CEO calls a statewide "crisis" of homelessness.

One of the tidbits in this week’s Council Watch got a lot of attention. Albuquerque is going to build a line from a local dump to our Westside lockup. The excess methane that’s usually burned off at the landfill with be used to heat water in the jail’s boiler room.

It’s predicted the project will save the Bernalillo County Metropolitan Detention Center thousands every year for about a century.